Breaking Free

I decide to sneak out of the window after getting dressed. I have my usual attire, a baggy sweatshirt, a pair of baggy pants and my glasses in my backpack because I know that my dad will probably pick me up after school and I don't want to get caught in the outfit I'm sneaking out in.
I'm wearing a white tank top. One that I'm only allowed to wear if it's really hot and I'm working inside of the house. The feeling of rebellion struck me as I pulled it on over my plain, white bra. I felt more alive at putting a tank top on than I had in a very long time.
Paired with the tank top, I'm wearing a pair of jeans that my father had bought me at a thrift store. I was never allowed to wear them because they are a little tight in the legs and he is against them one hundred percent.
I have a pony tail holder wrapped around my right wrist so I can pull my hair up when I get to the school. I'm not wearing my hair down and in my face today.
I feel crazy for some reason, dressed in a bunch of crazy clothes that I normally don't wear, ditching my fake glasses and sneaking out of my bedroom window, but damn if it doesn't feel good.
When I get to the bus stop to wait for the bus, I cut into the bus house so my father won't see me if he drives by, but on my first look out, I see that familiar blue truck.
Jackson.
I see him smiling at me when he sees me looking out of the bus house.
"Come on," he mouths to me.
I shake my head no.
He motions me with his finger and I'm compelled to run to the truck.
Once inside, he looks me over once and gives me a funny look.
"What?" I ask.
"You look different," Jackson points out.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"You just don't look the same as you did yesterday, you look, happier," he says.
"Oh," I reply.
I don't know what else to say to him because I really am kind of different than I was yesterday. I feel a little more like the girl that I want to be.
Jackson drives us to school and I can't help but feeling overwhelmingly free.
When we get to the school, I step out of the truck and pull my hair into a ponytail.
Jackson looks across the cab at me and smiles.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing," he replies but his smile doesn't falter.
I look at him strangely but don't think anything of it.
I walk into the school and to my locker. There are people looking at me as I stand there, placing some of my books inside, I can tell that they are wondering either who I am or what has gotten into me.
"Is that girl new?" I hear a girl ask her overly chatty friend.
"No, that's Lina Stevenson, who knew she was so pretty?" the friend asks.
I can't help the blush that enters my cheeks.
I try to brush off some of the ruder comments from people about my looks, but they do still get to me and I feel that they have more of an impact on me than the positive comments. When someone calls me ugly or worst of all, a whore or a slut, which I am neither, it really upsets me and I have to fight back tears.
At one point through the day, more people have come up to say 'hello' or just to ask what was going on and that makes me happy. I want to be social again, but I still want to be cautious.
I don't want to have anyone too close to me because I know that eventually they'll start to ask questions about my transformation and they are not questions I'm ready to answer just yet.
After my third class, I go to lunch and people are starting to stop staring, I guess something else has happened to take the attention off of me and for that I'm grateful.
As I'm finishing my lunch. A thought comes to my mind.
Emancipation.
I decide to spend the second half of lunch in the school library.
I take diligent notes from the web pages that I find online. I find that getting emancipated won't be an easy process.
The first step is to make my case as to why I want to be emancipated. I already know the answer to that and it's an easy answer to me, but I'm sure a judge is going to want to hear more than "my dad is mean to me".
The requirement for me is that I must have already turned fourteen and I am sixteen so that won't be a problem at all.
I must have a job and have my own permanent home. That is going to be the tricky part. I don't know how I'm going to be able to hunt for a job and move out while I'm still under my fathers roof. It's something that I'm going to have to work toward or I'm going to be stuck with him for another two or more years. I'm sure even when I turn eighteen, he's not going to let me go easily.
One of the steps is to get my parents consent. There is no way that that's going to happen, so I'm thankful that I will be able to plead my case in front of a judge to show that I would be better off on my own than I would be with my father.
I have been broken and abused for so long that it's weird for me to even think about getting emancipated. But it's also something that needs to be done.
I finish my research and go to class. I'm about five minutes late and that causes me to get a tardy. That's not going to go over well with my father when he finds out. Unfortunately with our school, a tardy is a call home.
I know when I get home, I'll have to deal with him yelling at me.
The rest of the day goes quickly and I'm not late for my last two classes. I walk back to my locker and grab my backpack out and head to the bathroom where I can change into the baggy jeans and sweatshirt.
I can't find my glasses anywhere and I hope that my dad doesn't notice that they are gone. I think I may have left them at home on my night stand.
I could have sworn that I stuck them in my backpack, I vividly remember putting them inside before I climbed out of the window this morning.
When I get outside, my dad's truck is waiting for me.
I climb inside and he gives me a mean look.
"Where are your glasses?" he asks hatefully.
"I-I don't know," I answer honestly.
"Why aren't they on your face?" he asks meaner this time.
"I thought I had them on, honestly," I lie.
Before I can react, a hand reaches out and smacks me on the cheek.
"That's for lying to me," he says handing me my glasses.
"I didn't mean to forget them," I cry.
He slaps me again, "That's for being a cry baby."
I keep my mouth shut and wait for him to start the truck and pull out of the parking spot, but before he does, a blue truck pulls in front of us and Jackson steps out.
"I saw what you did," he glares at my father.
"You didn't see a damn thing, kid," my father spits at Jackson.
"You're going to be in trouble, you know that right?" Jackson asks.
"You're not going to say a word, you got that?" my dad asks leaning out of the driver's side window and glaring at Jackson.
I meet eyes with Jackson and shake my head no. I don't want him getting into it because I'll be the one to suffer for it.
Jackson turns and walks back to his truck.
"Who is that?" my father yells at me.
"Just someone who goes to school with me, I don't know him," I answer. Which is kind of the truth, I don't really know Jackson, but even though I do know his name, I'm not going to tell my father, because it won't go over so well.
"He needs to mind his own business!" my father yells out.
"I know, daddy," I say quietly. "I know."
My dad peals out of the parking lot and as soon as we get home, he lays another slap across my face and sends me into the kitchen to start dinner and to clean up the mess that he had made that morning.
"I'm really fucking pissed at you right now, Lina," my father says. "You disobeyed me."
"I'm sorry," I say fighting back tears.
"You're always fucking sorry, when will you get it through your thick skull that what I say around here is law?"
Before I can answer, he storms out of the kitchen and down the hallway. I can hear his bedroom door slam behind him.
I sink to the kitchen floor and bury my face in my hands and cry.
After a few minutes, I stand up and start cleaning up the kitchen, picking up toppled chairs and picking broken glass from a plate that had been smashed off of the floor.
I reach down to grab a piece and cut my hand.
"Shit," I mutter to myself as I walk to the sink to wash my cut. I bandage it up and go about what I was doing.